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The American Society of Civil Engineers is cracking down on researchers who post their own articles on their personal websites. The publisher, which owns dozens of highly cited journals, claims that the authors commit copyright infringement by sharing their work in public. To make their work easier to access, many researchers host copies of their work on their personal profiles, usually hosted by their university. Interestingly, however, this usually means that they are committing copyright infringement.
While many journals allow this type of limited non-commercial infringement by the authors, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) clearly doesn't. The professional association publishes dozens of journals and during the past few weeks began a crack down on "pirating" researchers.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by moo kuh on Sunday May 18 2014, @10:56AM
(Score: 2, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday May 18 2014, @11:56AM
"Any research funded by the public through grants or student tuition"
Its only 90% funded by federal grants and student tuition, and the remaining 10% was from the endowment or whatever, so you need a short little perl script that only outputs 90% of the words in the paper. The DoD / DoE / whatever contributed money, but that money was spent on something directly relevant to the task but not interesting to read about, like safety gear or health insurance or grad student stipends but the actual paper, as in committing words and drawings to paper, was entirely funded by XYZ.
Not saying I agree with any of it, but the slogan is already full of a zillion loopholes that need addressing, or rephrased, if the loopholes were addressed as the cause, then the effect would have resolved itself a long time ago.
Frankly neither the universities as middlemen or the journals as middlemen contribute much if anything, and should be routed around. Simply stop donating public funds to universities for research and the situation will kinda resolve itself.
(Score: 3, Informative) by moo kuh on Sunday May 18 2014, @02:52PM
I disagree with your statement that the universities don't offer much. They give researchers a stable job and benefits. They provide research assistants in the form of graduate students. They provide equipment and facilities.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday May 18 2014, @03:00PM
Ah, offer much that only a university can offer. Most private sector employers offer all the same features. I'm having trouble thinking of something only a university can offer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by redneckmother on Sunday May 18 2014, @03:12PM
Well, I was going to say "freedom from profit motivation", but then I reconsidered.
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday May 18 2014, @03:38PM
Good luck getting fundamental research without any chance of creating a product in the next twenty years to get funded by a private company.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday May 18 2014, @05:01PM
You are right of course, all the research done is pointed in a specific direction. If you do R&D for Corning then you know you'll be making some kind of glass. But i'd say that within your niche that the research could be pure and not just applied. At least i hope so!
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 18 2014, @12:39PM
It's not just US IP law -- you have to sign copyright release forms on acceptance, and they detail your rights quite clearly, though I'd add the journals I've published in tend to have special extra clauses for researchers working in the US. In the journals I've published in those rights include publishing a copy of a pre-print on your personal website and on a managed pre-print server (such as arXiv) but do not extend to publishing hard-copy, disseminating to electronic publishing outlets, and in some cases not even on your university's website except on your personal pages.
Right or wrong, the conditions are normally pretty clear. They're also normally pretty flouted in unimportant ways, but if the journals wanted to clamp down a lot of people wouldn't have much leg to stand on.